Michael Rivest: A fighter’s hidden opponent is the scale

Weight. Sit down with any fighter for two minutes and the issue will likely come up. It’s part of fighters’ lives. Besides relentless training, obsessive preoccupation with the scale is the price they pay for the life they choose.

Yet arguably no dimension of the sport is less understood by the casual fan. There’s such more to it than weight divisions and fighters who fit into them.

Fighters use weight to their advantage, sometimes in ways that are less than honorable. On March 1, Mexico’s Orlando Salido manhandled phenom Ukrainian prospect Vasyl Lomachenko for much of their 12-round HBO fight. Salido couldn’t make the contracted 126-pounds, later telling HBO’s Max Kellerman his body simply could no longer attain it. But he’d fought there for 12 years, doing so as recently as five months ago. Does anybody’s metabolism change in the length of a football season? Or was it rather the calculated strategy of a veteran, looking for unfair advantage over a younger, eager, but smaller opponent? After weighing-in at 128- pounds to Lomachenko’s 125, Salido rehydrated to 147, to Lomachenko’s 136, creating an 11-pound difference by fight night.

“All other things being equal on a skill level,” said Albany trainer Andy Schott, “that amount of weight represents a substantial advantage.”

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“Salido had to give up his title as a result of not making weight,” continued Schott’s partner, Kyle Provenzano, “but what did he care? He got the win. He’ll make a ton of money in his next fight. Broner did the same thing against Vincente Escobedo,” referring to how in 2012, Adrien Broner was forced to give up his WBO super featherweight title for failing to make the 130-pound contract, coming in at 133 ½ to gain unfair advantage. “He knew he’d make money, and what were Escobedo and Lomachenko going to do, refuse to fight and give up the payday?”

There are more egregious examples. There’s the historic February 2000 battle between Arturo Gatti and Joey Gamache, where both fighters supposedly weighed in at 141-pounds. A later investigation found Gatti’s weight to have been considerably more. He cheated at the weigh-in, rehydrated to a whopping 162-pounds, then delivered a brutal 2nd round knockout that ended Gamache’s career.

So why are weigh-ins conducted the night before a fight? Wouldn’t doing them on fight night minimize the vast weight differentials caused by the dehydration/re-hydration swing? That’s the way it was done until the 1980s, but it brought its own set of problems. TV schedules couldn’t wait while commissions resolved disputes created when fighters didn’t make weight. And far more serious, research had clearly shown the correlation between dehydration and brain injury. So state commissions introduced the one-day space.

Yet a boxer’s weight remains a part of the sport’s legitimate strategy. Fighters and trainers are always discerning what weight is in their best interest. Typically, a fighter wants to get as low as possible. You bring your strength with you and fight smaller opponents. But there’s a limit. Go too low and you lose that strength, even your timing. You just don’t feel right. Fighters learn to know their own bodies in a way that’s almost eerie. “I could tell when I was at 138 compared to 140,” said former local star, Danny Ferris. “It felt different in the ring.”

Fighters use weight to craft a plan of action, studying their opponents, and tailoring their weight accordingly. Schott recalled an example from his own amateur career when he secured a spot on the 1980 U.S. National Team and a coveted role as an alternate on the U.S. Olympic Team. “I could fight at 156 or 165. Although my natural weight was 170, I knew I could squeeze down to 156. But in this case, I looked at the competition at both weights and at 156 there were five world-class fighters. So I did the opposite of what you would typically do and fought at 165 and it worked.”

But that’s an exception. Here’s a common scenario, arrived at with Schott’s help. Suppose there’s a fight between two evenly matched fighters who have contracted at 135. Fighter A’s natural weight is 142, and although his corner believes that with extra dedication he could easily fight at 130, “A” loves Five Guys too much to make the necessary sacrifice and only restricts his diet two weeks before the fight. But he makes 135.

Fighter B, on the other hand, is a naturally bigger guy who typically walks around at 155, 13-pounds heavier. But he has the discipline of Francis of Assisi and essentially lives on the saint’s diet of bird seed for six weeks, dropping to 142 one week out of fight night. He doubles down in the final week, drying out in the 24-hours before weigh-in, and voila, he’s 135. He feels great, but is he ever hungry and thirsty.

After the weigh-in, “A” rehydrates to his familiar 142, while Francis gets to a bigger, stronger 152. Put your money on the Italian saint. “That kind of weight difference is like a 90-mph fast ball versus an 80-mph one,” said Provenzano. “It’s huge.”

Some fighters try a third way, but usually only once, and that is to ignore weight until the end, then drop too much, too quickly. “That guy is weakened and his electrolytes get so out of wack,” said Schott, “that he’s finished after three rounds.”

So the next time you tune into an HBO fight, and you hear ring announcer Michael Buffer say the fighters’ weights in his introduction, pay attention, and know that they didn’t get there by accident. They knew exactly what they were doing, and why.